12 typical situations you are guaranteed to encounter when using a BPM platform

Transcription

1 12 typical situations you are guaranteed to encounter when using a BPM platform 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 1

2 Smoothly implementing a BPM platform along with a handful of key processes is only the beginning The true strength of a BPM solution is measured by its ability to effortlessly build upon, manage and integrate hundreds of processes. In the following article, we break down 12 real-life scenarios which specialists responsible for the development and maintenance of BPM systems can expect to encounter on a daily basis. Each situation presents a different set of challenges and obstacles, which we ll be taking a closer look at below. We wish to highlight areas which are prone to becoming sources of problems at one point or another. It is our intention to inform you, dear reader, that deciding on a BPM solution is a very complex process, and that it is absolutely essential to be fully aware of all consequences that may result from this decision both good and bad. We hope you find the following piece valuable WEBCON team 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 2

3 Situation 1 YOU ARE LEAVING ON VACATION AND HAVE DOZENS OF ONGOING TASKS IN VARIOUS PROCESSES Assign active tasks to the designated substitutes and grant them access to necessary resources Tasks and privileges should be assigned to both the absent employee and their substitute simultaneously When the vacation ends, all tasks and privileges temporarily assigned to a substitute should be returned to the original user Integrated substitution system, if needed for each process separately Ability to obtain information about substitutions from external systems Defines who may assign substitutions to whom 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 3

4 Situation 2 THE COMPANY HAS BEEN REORGANIZED, YOU ARE NOW A HEAD OF DEPARTMENT You want an overview of every task and document assigned to your direct and indirect subordinates You want access to the history of each task, as well as the ability to reorganize duties and access privileges Access to tasks, documents and workflow elements is granted based on the most recent company structure Company structure is loaded automatically from the Active Directory or any other system 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 4

5 Situation 3 A NEW SALES PROCEDURE WAS INTRODUCED WITHIN THE COMPANY. YOU STILL HAVE HUNDREDS OF PURCHASE REQUESTS IN VARIOUS STAGES OF COMPLETION The new company procedure requires all purchases to be handled by the sales department The change should be introduced on the testing environment first After testing and approval, the changes should be transferred to the production environment By default, all changes to the process definition are applied to all ongoing workflow elements Moving updates from TEST to PROD environments will also alter the behavior of ongoing processes In the ENTERPRISE version, licenses for DEV and TEST environments are provided free of charge 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 5

6 Situation 4 A COMPLEX WORKFLOW FOR PLACING ORDERS, CONTAINING OVER A DOZEN STEPS AND FORMS REQUIRES THE ADDITION OF AN EXTRA ELEMENT You want to introduce an additional field onto every form. It will be used to specify the priority of the order, and placed in a clearly visible spot This change should affect both the desktop and mobile version The system allows for modifying the default positioning of form fields, as well as their visibility and accessibility settings on individual steps By default the mobile form inherits settings of its web counterpart 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 6

7 Situation 5 THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT NEEDS A SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATICALLY GENERATING AND ARCHIVING AGREEMENTS Agreements should be generated according to templates designed with MS Word; data should be loaded into them directly from a CRM The finished agreement should be converted to PDF and have a digital signature applied to it A scan of paper document signed by both parties should be kept in the system and treated as the final document WEBCON Word Add-in allow simultaneous work on Word documents The system allows to generate and update documents using custom templates for MS Word Data placed in MS Office documents can be loaded from external systems and can be presented in table form Word and PDF attachments can be signed with a digital certificate from Central Certificate Store, or by using the DocuSign component 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 7

8 Situation 6 CERTAIN USERS ARE EXPERIENCING INEXPLICABLY LONG FORM LOADING TIMES A rapid diagnosis to pinpoint the cause of this issue is necessary Complex system for gathering global and individual statistics Two logging levels (debug i trace) quickly identify the source of the problem: external factor, Web Service, business rule, suboptimal query Every time the form is loaded, detailed information about obtaining data used in form fields and queries to the database is presented 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 8

9 Situation 7 THE COMPANY S VACATION PLANNING APPLICATION SHOULD ALSO BE AVAILABLE ON MOBILE DEVICES Deliver an app for registering and approving vacation dates as cheaply and fast as possible. It should work on ios, Android, Windows Phone Mobile apps are available to download for free in app stores for ios, Android and Windows Phone By default, every business application designed in WEBCON BPS is compatible with mobile devices The mobile app features a native, user-friendly interface that displays workflow element lists identically to desktop Web Parts Form display has been optimized for mobile devices 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 9

10 Situation 8 ONE OF YOUR DEPARTMENTS STILL DELIVER DOCUMENTS IN PAPER FORM You want an immediate access to information about the document: the consignment note number, total weight of the delivered goods, and order number The process of obtaining the specific information from a document has to be automatic Integrated OCR module based on artificial neural network algorithms OCR learns on its own. Providing the system with a few examples of paper documents and specifying where to find the desired data is enough for it to identify patterns and recognize those fields on future documents 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 10

11 Situation 9 IT IS NECESSARY TO MIGRATE THE SHAREPOINT ENVIRONMENT TO A NEWER VERSION The migration costs should be kept as low as possible During the migration, the system should be running continuously and relatively unimpeded Graphic design or programming adjustments should be reduced to a bare minimum Returning to the previous version of the system should be possible as a part of a security procedure WEBCON BPS has supported all SharePoint versions from WSS 2.0 up to SharePoint 2016 Enterprise, allowing effortless migration The newest versions of WEBCON BPS will always support the most recent and the preceding version of the SharePoint platform Switching between the supported versions of SharePoint does not hinder the workflow engine in any way 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 11

12 Situation 10 FROM NOW ON, INCOMING AND OUTGOING DOCUMENTS MUST MARKED AND ARCHIVED Fast authentication and identification of incoming and outgoing documents (both physical and electronic) Fast access to crucial information regarding the document s history (author, sender, send date, recipient, purpose, location of the original document) Integrated system for applying barcodes to documents Cooperates with barcode printers (e.g. ZEBRA) Applying 2D codes to generated MS Word and PDF documents as well as form printouts Documents that are received via , scanned or placed in network folders are automatically queued for OCR processing, and then added as attachments to workflow elements 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 12

13 Situation 11 YOU NEED A GRAPHIC STATUS REPORT ON THE KEY PROCESSES IN YOUR COMPANY The management needs to have a tool that is both fast and easy to interpret (i.e. administration dashboard) This graphic visualization should also be available on mobile devices Detailed information must also be available to those interested Integrated Web Parts allow various charts to be generated based on metadata in workflow elements No programming required in chart creation Charts are available on mobile devices Charts also allow detailed analysis comprehensive data can be viewed in a table after clicking the char 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 13

14 Situation 12 SINCE THE INTRODUCTION OF ISO STANDARDS IN YOUR COMPANY, ALL ACTIVE PROCESSES MUST BE CONTINUOUSLY DOCUMENTED Every process defined in the system must include detailed documentation Documentation should be updated one day after implementing changes at the latest Documentation must be standardized Built-in mechanism for process documentation generation In addition to the description, a graphic visualization of the process is also generated The process administrator may include annotations at various stages of a processes creation (e.g. after making an adjustment) to enhance the level of detail in the documentation Documentation created for each and every process will adhere to the same standard 12 TYPICAL SITUATIONS BPM PLATFORM 14 WEBCON Babinskiego 69, Krakow, Poland tel , fax District Court for Krakow - Śródmieście, 11th Commercial Division of the National Court Register Amount of share capital: 55,500 PLN Tax ID No National Business Registry No.: National Court Register No.: